James Agee: Film Writing and Selected Journalism

Let Us Now Praise

In the upper echelon of American film writing, we have Pauline Kael,
Andrew Sarris and Manny Farber, as well as occasional high-profile
dabblers like Graham Greene, Robert Warshow and Susan Sontag, but
resting high above them all is one name: James Agee.

Though Agee (1909-1955) only reviewed films for a short time, for Time
Magazine from 1941-1948 and for The Nation from 1942-1948, his writing
continues to inspire. He was intelligent, but crafty and funny at the
same time; he adopted an attitude appropriate to the medium. He was
quotable, but never resorted to hyperbole. He could get at the essence
of a film in 100 words, or he could go on for pages about a masterpiece
like Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux. He championed unsung "B" movies, such
as those by Val Lewton (The Curse of the Cat People, Isle of the Dead).
He could praise filmmakers like Jean Renoir or Preston Sturges, and at
the same time, ruthlessly tear away at the flaws in their films. He
wrote a long piece on comedies of the silent era that to this day is one
of Life Magazine's most popular stories. He was a tireless champion of
wartime documentaries, especially those by John Huston, and his
enthusiasm eventually won him a job writing the screenplay for Huston's
The African Queen.

In this new two-volume Library of America collection, cannily assembled
by film critic Michael Sragow (The Baltimore Sun), we can see that Agee
was, above all, a writer. His genius flowed whether he was writing film
reviews, screenplays, novels, non-fiction or essays about cockfighting.

This superb, essential, exciting collection "James Agee: Let Us Now
Praise Famous Men, A Death in the Family, Shorter Fiction" (2005,
Library of America, $35) begins with Agee's non-fiction book Let Us Now
Praise Famous Men (1941), including the original Walker Evans
photographs, and his one fiction novel, A Death in the Family (1957),
which won Agee a posthumous Pulitzer Prize. Finally, we get three
marvelous short stories.

The second volume "James Agee: Film Writing and Selected Journalism"
(2005, Library of America, $40) contains the film criticism, previously
collected in Agee on Film Vol. 1, and continues with another sheaf of
uncollected criticism -- including a review of Howard Hawks's Red River
-- as well as book reviews and essays (ranging on topics from orchids to
the aforementioned cockfighting) and his screenplay for The Night of the
Hunter (1955).

Agee on Film Vol. 1 was one of the five or six most important film books
in my overstuffed library, and these new Library of America editions
have not only surpassed it, but they have also broadened Agee, making
him one of my favorite authors, period.